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fi^* Read and hand to your Neighbor. 






WORDS OF COUNSEL 



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MEN OF BUSINESS. 




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BY A MAN OF BUSINESS. 



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WORDS OF COUNSEL. 



The object of this little tract — simply and intelligibly written 
— is to show reflecting men, and especially citizens of Pennsyl- 
vania and the North, why they should vote for Mr. Buchanan as 
President of the United States. It is addressed to men of busi- 
ness and practical industry. It is written by a man of business, 
who understands the work he has had to do in life better than 
politics; and who was born and bred and has earned his living, 
and whatever success he has had, here in Pennsylvania. Nor is 
it at all material — and so end these words of preface — whether 
the writer is a merchant or mechanic of Philadelphia, a farmer 
of Lancaster or Berks, a collier from Schuylkill, or Luzerne, or 
Lehigh, an iron-master from Centre or Columbia, or a manu- 
facturer from Pittsburg — if the reader will realize the actual 
truth that he is a man of work, mental and bodily. Among 
all trades and occupations, especially here in Pennsylvania, 
penetrated in every nook and corner by the nerves of internal 
commerce, and more dependent than any other State on domestic 
tranquillity, there is the closest sympathy and communion. The 
question of the next Presidency is a question of practical inte- 
rest to all, and so it ought to be regarded. 

THE TRUE QUESTION. 

Let us see how it presents itself, under what aspect of novelty, 
and with what portents for the future — not the remote future 
which is to dawn upon our children, but the immediate futui-e in 
which we living, working-men are interested. It may be well to 
look at this question without reference to individuals. Let us 
then so consider it — and let him who reads meditate on each 
proposition that is stated, and if he questions any matter of fact, 
let him scrutinize it for himself. This is no appeal to passion 
or to prejudice, but an honest effort to convince. 



It is now, or will be next September, sixty-nine years since 
the Constitution of the United States was formed. They have 
been years of tranquillity and prosperous progress. With brief 
spasms of war, lasting in the aggregate but some half dozen 
years out of the sixty-nine — and of occasional commercial dis- 
tress, trade and industry, except when experiments with the 
currency have interfered with them, have wonderfully prospered, 
but never have they more prospered than within the last ten 
years. Yet during this long period of steady progress, there 
have been periodical political contests and changes, marked with 
ordinary party acrimony. One side has succeeded to-day — and 
another succeeded to-morrow, and yet national prosperity, social 
and economical, has not been disturbed. In truth, the revolu- 
tions in national politics, especially those which have occurred 
since 1836, have seemed to exercise a salutary influence by the 
very change of administrative routine which they involved. 
Questions of politics ran through the whole Union. The South- 
ern Democrat or the Southern Whig had close sympathy with 
his Northern or Eastern or Western brother. The four Presi- 
dents of the last sixteen years were sometimes Northern and 
sometimes Southern men, but whatever they were, there was 
nothing in the victory their party gained, to force on them the 
necessity of prosciibing, in their administrative arrangements, 
the public men of any portion of the country. All was harmo- 
nious, and the government, with apparent rather than real change 
of policy, continued to protect and sustain the great interests of 
the whole country. That which was the great element of success 
with government, and contentment with the people, was the 
absence of sectional party spirit. Throughout the last half cen- 
tury there has been not only a political union in form, but a 
sympathy that transcended and overcame all territorial divisions — 
and it is not in the capacity of language to describe how condu- 
cive this has been to the business interests of the country. 
Every now and then, a spirit of sectionalism broke out, as a pesti- 
lence is apt to do, in a certain spot, but it raged with violence 
only round that spot, and the rest of the Union put it in strict 
quarantine and kept it out. In 1844, "sectionalism," or to use 
a more familiar term, " abolitionism" (or under its new name 
"republicanism"), prevented the election of Mr. Clay, determi- 
ning by the Birney votes, that of the State of New York. In 
1848, sectionalism in a new guise reappeared in certain locali- 
ties as before, and took the same vote from General Cass. But 
then, and till now, sectionalism was what the doctors call 
sporadic : very bad in certain places, but easily managed and 
controlled elsewhere. How is it going to be now ? This is the 
question for men of business, for national men, for patriots, for 
lovers of the Constitution — without whose protection business 



interests cannot exist — to ponder over well. The Union has been 
before now supposed to be in danger, and anxious and nervous, 
and in some instances, judicious men have become alarmed about 
its permanence. This was the case in 1819, in the agitation of 
the Missouri Question, when the real point at issue before the 
people was evaded, and the palliative was resorted to of a territorial 
prohibition for posterity, to postpone the evil day. It was the case 
again in 1832, when General Jackson's resolute patriotism (and 
how thoroughly and gallantly the whole nation sustained him !) 
repressed Nullification in a single Southern State, and a compro- 
mise postponing tariff" pregnant of future trouble was the remedy. 
And again was there anxiety and alarm in 1850, when local irri- 
tation in the form of Wilmot provisoes, and Prigg decisions, and 
evasions and resistance of fugitive slave laws in the North — and 
jealous irritability and perhaps disappointment in the South, led 
to apparent conflict and disturbance, and to the compromise 
measures of 1850. The almost dying words of a Whig Presi- 
dent, in the only message he sent to Congress, yet linger in the 
heart of this nation — for. Southern man as he was, he loved the 
Union with a simple faith and loyalty that shames the treason- 
able denunciations of fanaticism. 

"For more than half a century," said General Taylor in his 
message to the 31st Congress, " during which kingdoms and 
empires have fallen, this Union has stood unshaken. The patriots 
who formed it have long since descended to the grave ; yet still it 
remains the proudest monument to their memory, and the object 
of affection and admiration with every one worthy to bear the 
American name. In my judgment, its dissolution would be the 
greatest of calamities, and to avert that should be the study of 
every American. Upon its preservation must depend our own 
happiness and that of countless generations to come." 

But all these were superficial irritations and transient alarms, 
for through them all, in the darkest and most threatening hours, 
there was nothing like sectional politics. There were Southern 
and Northern Whigs, and Southern and Northern Democrats — 
and fanatics and sectionalists stood aloof, in little knots by 
themselves. No Abolitionist, as such, ventured to raise his voice 
or show his face in a Democratic or a Whig meeting or Conven- 
tion. If abolitionism, or sectionalism, or intrusive fanaticism, had 
opened its lips in the Avhig city of Philadelphia, the merchants, 
and manufacturers, aside from all patriotic sentiment, feeling 
how deeply their business interests Avere involved in the peace of 
the Union, would have sternly rebuked it — if in the Democratic 
counties of Berks, or Schuylkill, or Westmoreland or Centre, the 
voice of treason or even disaffection to the Union had been heard, 
the result would have been the same. 

But now, in this year 1856, for the first time in the history of 



6 

- the nation, the politics of the country have, by the acts of one 
party alone, become intensely sectional. Every calculation of 
chance which fanaticism makes is founded on sectionalism. 
One candidate, and he the candidate, not of the patriotic, but of 
the fanatic North, expects to get none but Northern votes, and 
thus to gain a sectional triumph. 

Let us see how this has come about, and what it must end in. 
The answer is to be found in the action of two political conven- 
tions, one of which met at Cincinnati, and nominated James 
Buchanan, and the other of which met at Philadelphia, two weeks 
later, and nominated John C. Fremont. It must be borne in mind 
that in this relation we are not speaking of individuals, or of 
candidates, except as representatives. 

In the Cincinnati Convention, every State of the Union, North, 
South, East, and West, was fully represented, and the choice 
was a Northern man. In the Philadelphia Convention no 
Southern State had an actual representation. Virginia had a 
few straggling representatives, but they felt themselves degraded, 
and were silent. It was, in its component parts, sectional from 
first to last. 

But what spirit directed its action and controlled its choice? 
In what spirit was it convoked ? 

On the 16th of May, 1856, thus spoke a Senator from Massa- 
chusetts in his place in the Senate. 

" The slave power with its loathsome folds is now coiled over 
the whole land." "It shall be swept into the charnel-house of 
defunct tyrannies." " Hirelings picked from the drunken spew and 
vomit of an uneasy civilization — in the form of men — leagued to- 
gether by secret signs and lodges, have renewed the incredible 
atrocities of the Assassins and of the Thugs ; showing the blind sub- 
mission of the Assassins to the Old Man of the Mountain, in robbing 
Christians on the road to Jerusalem, and showing the heartless- 
ness of the Thugs, who, avowing that murder was their religion, 
waylaid travellers on the great road from Agra to Delhi ; with 
the more deadly bowie-knife for the dagger of the Assassin, and 
the more deadly revolver for the noose of the Thug." 

So spoke one Massachusetts man in an atmosphere already 
heated and explosive. 

Mark, American reader — mark, you who love the Union, and 
feel how much the Union does for you and yours — the words of 
another Massachusetts man — one who was found worthy to be 
Daniel Webster's first successor in the Senate. On the 2d of 
June, but a few days before the Philadelphia Convention met, 
Robert C. Winthrop wrote these words of wise and gentle 
counsel : 

" I have no hope that violent speeches, angry resolutions, or 
inflammatory appeals will do anything towards accomplishing a 



good result. It is no time for indulging in sweeping denunciations, 
indiscriminate and insulting reproaches, towards other sections of 
the Union. On the contrary, beyond almost all other periods of 
our history, since we had a history as a united nation, unless we 
are willing to see that history brought to a bloody close and the 
volume closed forever, it is the time for the calmest, wisest, most 
collected words of which any man is capable." 

To these words of gentle wisdom, while " licentious grossness 
of language and personal violence" were desecrating the Capitol 
and preparing for the outburst of fanaticism at Philadelphia, 
there came an answer from Virginia, from one of the most dis- 
tinguished and most tolerant and conservative of her statesmen, 
living in retirement within sight of Jefferson's grave. 

" We have been," writes William C. Rives, of Virginia, " of late 
rapidly and fearfully drifting into that geographical antagonism 
of parties, which all good and wise men have so earnestly depre- 
cated; and in which, when it shall have been consummated, 
what, Mr. Madison impressively asks, is to ' control those great 
repulsive masses from awful shocks against each other ?' Pass- 
ing events have given a solemnity to this prophetic warning, 
which it is no longer possible to disregard, and which calls upon 
patriotic and reflecting men everywhere to unite in a strenuous 
and determined effort to exclude from the arena of national 
politics a question so fruitful of sectional strife." 

At the same time, as if in further warning, Millard Fillmore 
•wrote from the Old World to his friends here, that he was return- 
ing home, "if possible to aid in quieting that alarming sectional 
agitation which, while it delights the monarchists of Europe, 
causes every true friend of our own country to mourn." 

Thus stimulated on the one hand and warned on the other — in 
the city where the Constitution was framed, and where were 
uttered "Washington's farewell words of warning against " Geo- 
graphical Parties," a Convention met, and named a sectional 
candidate for President of the United States, and urged his elec- 
tion on sectional grounds. This, no human being doubts. No 
longer were abolitionists localized. They — the most violent and 
fanatical of the name — were the leaders of the Convention. The 
orators were Giddings and Wilmot and Elder and Lovejoy — the 
slanderers of Clay and Webster, the defiers of the Constitution, 
the exhorters of resistance to statutes of the United States. — 
When the name of John M'Lean, of Ohio, was suggested and 
urged, the memory that as a Federal Judge, sworn to support the 
Constitution of the United States, he had sustained and enforced 
the Fugitive Slave Law, rose up, and he was rejected, almost in 
scorn, as unsuited to sectional purposes. 

One speaker (J. Watson Webb) said, embodying in his words 
the worst spirit of violence, " If we fail at the election, we must 



8 

drive back the slaveocracy with fire and sword ;" and another 
(0. J. Lovejoy) used plainer language still, and he was cheered 
and applauded. These are the significant words : 

" The American people have a mission to carry out — this mis- 
sion was understood in the days of the Pilgrim fathers, and in 
the days of Jefferson. It was not to chase negroes — it was indi- 
cated in the Declaration of Independence. The question now 
to be decided is, whether we will fulfil our mission. I proclaim 
myself an Abolitionist — I think the party has that disease, and., 
before the campaign is through, it tvill break out all over." 

Now, with these words fresh in recollection, authenticated and 
acknowledged, will any reflecting man. North or South, hesitate 
in believing that the issue thus presented to the people is a 
sectional one, and that the worst prophecy of evil as to geogra- 
phical parties has at length been realized ? To vote for candi- 
dates thus named and thus sustained is to endorse the principles 
of disunion enunciated. And, supposing for a moment that such 
candidates could be elected, and an Executive Administration 
inaugurated on a narrow sectional basis, what four years of 
strife, and bickering, and domestic turmoil would ensue — and in 
such strife and turmoil that which would be soonest sacrificed is 
the great business interests of the Nation. All past distraction 
would be as nothing compared with this. 

Let any man of practical and successful industry realize, if he 
can, the dreary waste which civil strife produces. There have 
been imaginings heretofore. The inauguration of sectionalism 
would work awful realities. They need no rhetoric to paint 
them. 

It is a fearful truth, that there is greater danger at this mo- 
ment to the Union than ever in the history of the country. It 
is more alarming because the feeling, which this sectional nomi- 
nation creates, is silent and suppressed. 

There is no railing, there is no violence — but the conviction 
forced on the mind of the South, that the North, or any portion 
of the North, excludes them, and as it were marks them off, sinks 
deep into the heart. 

The election of an Abolition President breaks the Union into 
pieces, and Pennsylvania becomes a frontier, with the ragged 
edges of a frontier, with questions of boundary, of runaways, of 
aggression and resistance, of trouble of every kind ; and Phila- 
delphia and Pittsburg, neither of them fifty miles from the dividing 
line, not as they now are, great circulators of trade and manu- 
factures through the South and West, reduced to doubtful fron- 
tier towns, with markets dependent on foreign and uncertain 
legislation. 

The difiiculty is to make people believe all this possible. We 
have been so long used to peace and domestic concord that we 



can hardly imagine a disruption of the actual ties of political 
union. 

Yet, to repeat again Mr. Madison's question, in such a 
state of things as now exists, -with the fearful antagonism of 
geographical parties — " what is to control these great repulsive 
masses of North and South from awful shocks against each 
other" — and when was this antagonism more likelj to produce 
these results than now ? In order to make a practical applica- 
tion of this, let us contemplate an inevitable practical effect. 
Mr. Fremont is elected on the principles enunciated by Mr. 
'Giddings and the Phihidelphia Convention — the principles of 
ultra, offensive Abolition — the disease, which it is foretold, is to 
break out throughout the party, before the victory is won — how 
is he to carry on the Government ? His cabinet must be formed 
of men bred in the school, and faithful to the principles he 
espouses. To suppose that, if elected hy such men, he would 
repudiate and abandon them, is to impute personal dishonor. 
He goes into office bound hand and foot by express promises and 
close sympathy with men who do not scruple to avow they 
recognize, as citizens, a higher law than the Constitution, and 
■are willing, in contin<:;encies which are carelessly regarded as 
probable to let "the Union slide." 

Now, it is a matter of no conjecture, but of absolute assurance, 
that a government thus inaugurated cannot be peacefully or con- 
tentedly administered. There will be no repose. There will be 
no harmony of local interests. There will be aggression, and 
there must be resistance. Four years of such disturbance is a 
long period in the lives of us all. Its convulsions and excite- 
ments leave traces behind them on the business interests of the 
people that cannot soon be obliterated. He is at this moment 
the avowed candidate of the party and of the individual men 
(their names are on the record of the Republican Convention), 
"whom, in 1838, Henry Clay thus described and thus denounced : 

"With them the rights of property are nothing; the deficiency 
of the powers of the General Government is nothing; the acknow- 
ledged and incontestable powers of the States are nothing ; civil 
war, a dissolution of the Union, and the overthrow of a irovern- 
ment, in which are concentrated the fondest hopes of the civilized 
world, are nothing ; a single idea has taken possession of their 
minds, and onward they pursue it, overlooking all barriers, reck- 
less and regardless of all consequerjces. Their purpose is aboli- 
tion, universal abolition, peaceably, if it can, forcibly, if it must. 
One means and a most lamentable one, to which they resort, is 
that which this class of men is endeavoring to employ, of array- 
ing one portion against another portion of the Union. They try 
to excite the imaginations and stimulate the rage of the people 
of the Free States against the people of the Slave States. They 

2 



10 



infuse a spirit of detestation and liatred against one entire section 
of the Union." 

Let it be understood that it is under this influence that the 
Republican Candidate is nominated, will be supported, and, if 
elected, will administer, or try to administer, the Government. 
Who can doubt the mischievous result? 



JAMES BUCHANAN NO SECTIONALIST. 

Turning from this scene of violence, and sectionalism, and 
certain discord, we invite the working and business man to note 
the contrast. Let him observe the words of peaceful and con- 
servative wisdom with which James Buchanan speaks of this 
hateful subject of slavery and sectional discord. They are 
earnest. They are emphatic. They are precise. They reflect 
the deliberate intent with which he approaches the discharge of 
the great duty upon him — that of a National President of the 
United States. 

"The agitation on the question of Domestic Slavery," says 
Mr. Buchanan, " has too long distracted and divided the people 
of this Union, and alienated their aifections from each other.^ 

" Most happy will it be for the country, if this long agitation 
were at an end. During its whole progress it has produced no 
practical good to any human being, whilst it has been the source 
of great and dangerous evils. It has alienated and estranged 
one portion of the Union from the other, and has even seriously 
threatened its very existence. To my own personal knowledge, 
it has produced the impression among foreign nations, that our 
great and glorious confederacy is in constant danger of dissolu- 
tion. This does us serious injury, because acknowledged power 
and stability always command respect among nations, and are 
among the best securities against unjust aggression and in favor 
of the maintainance of honorable peace." 

Now, in these few words of plain and direct truth, is the pro- 
mise which this nomination gives to the industry of the nation, 
that they shall have, on this exciting topic, at least during Mr. 
Buchanan's Administration, — what industry most needs, — what 
the merchant and farmer, the mechanic and manufacturer, most 
require — stability, steadiness, repose. What a blessing beyond 
calculation it will be, to have an administration for four years, 
during which, by the mere force of personal example, no word 
of acrimony shall be uttered on the subject of Domestic Slavery, 
and the nation's evil passions may be at rest! 

So much for the claims and merits of each party on the one 
absorbing question of Sectionalism and Nationalism. It will be 
well now to inquire, — keeping steadily in view the business, prac- 



11 

tical interests of the nation — what else the administration of a 
public man like James Buchanan promises to the people. 

HIS PRIVATE CHARACTER. 

Let us, in no spirit of adulation (for the day for idolizing great 
men has happily passed by), look back on his career, as illustrated 
in forty years' history of his country, and see what assurance it 
gives. 

Chief of all his claims on public confidence (and let no tech- 
nical politician depreciate the praise) is his gentle temper, and 
the unblemished purity of his private life. Of that high honor, 
not even ungenerous adversaries can deprive him ; and if the 
attempt were made, there would arise from the neighborhood 
where his whole life has been spent, a voice of indignant, hearty 
vindication. The life of a public man has its private trials and 
temptations. There beset the path of an American Statesman, 
extending in this instance from youth to age, not a few perils to 
which the private character of many a one has been sacrificed. 
It is only he who, guarded and protected by kind and gentle influ- 
ence generated in his own heart, walks steadily that walks se- 
curely. More than two thousand years ago an orator of freedom 
wisely said that it was impossible for a man whose private cha- 
racter was bad to be a faithful leader of his country; or that 
private depravity could consist with public virtue ; or that he 
could he the Nation's friend, who was, in truth, the friend of no 
man there — that he could be strenuous in his country's cause, 
who slighted the charities 

" For whose dear ?ake 
That country, if at all, must be beloved!" 

It is the truth yet — and the private character of the Pennsyl- 
vania Statesman, thus unstained and spotless, is the highest and 
strongest of the links that bind him around the hearts of his 
countrymen. 

Nor is this an austere, forbidding virtue, for it is ennobled and 
harm.onized by a gentle, genial temper, and this too will be the 
testimony of those who know him best, of his Lancaster County 
neighbors, his friends and associates of fifty years — nnd of those 
public men who through all the vehemence of party strife (and 
our country has known heated times within the last brief cen- 
tury) have always acknowledged his gentleness, his liberality, his 
devoted courtesy. And here, too, we may well say, let no rude 
caviller deride this gentle virtue ; it helps to make the career 
of any public man happier. Mr. Buchanan's words have never 
Btung to resentment. His personal demeanor has never made 
his friends for a moment blush for passion or indiscretion. There 



12 I 

has been no vehemence, no intemperance in anything he ever 
■attered. 

Ours is the day of vehement passions and heated sectional 
animosities. It is the day too when the legislation of the country 
is believed to be threatened with insidious dangers. It is, there- 
fore, the time of all others when there is needed at the head of 
affairs a Statesman of pure character, unsuspected integrity, and 
of conciliatory, gentle;^ but resolute temper. 

BIS PUBLIC CAREER. 

Now let us, in the same spir't of candor, see what assurance 
for the future his long public life, chequered by few reverses^ 
gives his countrymen. 

That future—our immediate future— at the moment these words 
are written — is swelling with events of perilous significance. To 
some affecting internal peace allusion has been made. To others 
threatening our friendly relations with the world abroad, it is not 
necessary further to refer than by saying how clearly they admo- 
nish us to trust the Executive administration to safe, discreet, and 
resolute hands. Well m.ight the man of business tremble for his 
fortune or his credit if there were danger that sectional intole- 
rance and undisciplined enthusiasm so kindred to weakness should 
at a crisis like this usurp the government. 

TEE STATE LEGISLATURE. 

It is now forty-two years since Mr. Buchanan entered public 
life. His first step was on the modest platform of the State 
Legislature, where in Pennsylvania so much talent has been unos- 
tentatiously developed, but from which till now, to our shame be 
it spoken, there has been so little preferment. James Buchanan 
learned his earliest political lessons in the best school for public 
men, the Legislature of his native State. He was there during a 
foreign war, voting steadily to sustain the measures of that war, 
and enabling Pennsylvania to attain the real honor for which 
other States are now fiercely contending of contributing (as she 
did in the Ptevolution) most men and most money to the public 
service. 

He became a national man in 1821, having that year entered 
the House of Kepresentatives. 

THE MTSSOUm QUESTION. 

It Avas a period of \\\]\ nfter ?v tooraentoii.s storm; for the Mis- 
souri question had just, been decided, and the compromise line of 
arbitrary division adopted. The public mind was relieved froKi 



13 

an impending danger, and all were glad to liave repose at any 
cost. 

Mr. Buchanan came into national public life just as this 
struggle was over — the danger of sectionalism removed — the 
pretension of Congress to take from a State vrith a republican 
constitution the right to regulate for itself its own domestic 
institutions once and forever repudiated, and that question at 
last settled. 

THE WAR OF THE CURRENCY. 

Then came — and Mr. Buchanan was in it from first to last — 
the great twenty years' warfare about currency and trade. It 
began as early as General Jackson's first administration, and it 
ended on the permanent establishment of a revenue tariff and 
the utter separation of the Government and its resources from 
banking institutions and their resources, whatever they may claim 
to be. In all this wild warfare Mr. Buchanan has been steady 
and consistent, and moreover, has been proved to be in the right. 
For if at this moment of substantial prosperity, there is one 
thing on which the public mind of this nation is settled — it is 
that freedom of commercial intercourse, that a tariff for 
revenue, and above all restriction, vigilant and suspicious, of all 
contrivances for expanded credit, are the true secret of sound 
economical administration. There is not, it may safely be 
affirmed, a sane man in the country, who desires to see restored 
a high tariff — a Bank of the United States — or an expansion of 
paper currency. There is not a farmer, or a collier, or a miner, 
or a mechanic, from one end of the United States to the other, 
who is not at this moment content with what he earns, and with 
the coin in which he is paid for his daily labor. Yet it was for 
this that during twenty years, for the triumph was slowly won, 
James Buchanan and the Democratic party labored. Who shall 
say after watching this struggle, and this great result, that the 
party of the people is not after all the conservative party of the 
country. 

And who shall say — and this is the moral to which we call 
the attention of the working business men — that the commercial 
and industrial interests of the nation are not safer in the guar- 
dianship of public men thus trained and thus conservative, than 
in the hands of any light-headed, inexperienced adventurer, 
sprung from the diseased soil of commercial speculation. The 
Pennsylvania statesman who has all his life seen the same results 
of steady labor operating on the generous but not luxuriant soil 
of our feriile valleys, or winning by patient industry sure wages 
from our coal-mountains and iron-mines, is a safer guardian of 
the great interests, social and economical, of this hard-working 



14 

people, tlian any gold-digger or land operator that ever became 
rich by luck. 

And this training — this discipline in the right school of finance 
— it is which makes James Buchanan the very man for the 
times, looking at the election in its relations to mere business 
interests — the interest of the merchant, the farmer, or the manu- 
facturer. For industry, the great blessing is stability and repose. 

This review of Mr. Buchanan's life is not meant to be bio- 
graphy. It is but the rapid recapitulation of leading incidents, 
or rather the retrospect of a long career of public service, which 
it is believed has tended to form the character of a conservative 
statesman — a safe man for the times. 

National, then, in his views of our conflicting domestic institu- 
tions — resolute in his convictions on the great questions of finance 
and currency, what assurance do his life and character of mind 
give as to our foreign policy ? 



FOREIGN POLICY. 

The anxious wish of the American people — let mischievous 
traducers say what they please — is for honorable peace with all 
the world, and strict neutrality in the conflicts of foreign nations. 
Never did this wish more strongly move the people than at this 
very moment. Commerce, and manufactures, and agriculture, 
and the mechanic arts, never more prosperous than now, need 
and will exact, a peaceful policy from our rulers. The nomi- 
nation at Cincinnati was hailed by all thoughtful men at home, 
and will be so regarded abroad, as the triumph of the prin- 
ciples and policy of peace. It is, however, especially the triumph 
of the best sort of peaceful influences and sentiment — those 
which are consistent with jealous maintenance of national honor 
and national interests. Nothing can more tend to maintain 
peace with foreign nations — and especially that great nation 
from whom we inherit so many virtues and some peculiarities — 
than such concord and united counsels as the Convention at 
Cincinnati presented, united on all questions of internal policy, 
and united in the choice of their candidates. What could more 
stimulate the aggressions of foreign nations, especially those 
whose commercial interest it may seem to be to divide us, than 
the prospect that, for four years to come, there are to be do- 
mestic bickerings and discordant counsels — the North arrayed 
against the South, and the South against the North — an acci- 
dental and inexperienced Executive, in turmoil with Congress, and 
looked upon as an enemy worse than a foreign foe by a large 
portion of the people. The most hostile Englishman or French- 
man that ever railed at our free institutions never breathed 



15 

harsher or more envenomed words — amounting to moral treason 
— than were familiarly uttered and vehemently applauded in the 
assemblage which lately met in Philadelphia. The peace which 
they must expect from the world is only the peace which pity 
might vouchsafe to grant — not the peace which union and strength 
demand. 

In the Democratic Convention there was no word of sectional 
discord. The spectacle there exhibited was the representation 
of a united, high-spirited, and yet peace-loving nation. The 
only AYord of dissent that was whispered came from Southern lips 
ami they were words (and this the calumniators of the South 
would do well to remember) of caution and circumspection on the 
side of peace. For it is a fact worthy to be meditated on even 
by fanatics, and certainly by Northern men of business, that more 
than once in the history of our country, have Southern statesmen 
saved us from the calamities of actual war, or those hardly less 
annoying inflictions of commercial anxiety whether there will be 
war or not. The much-reviled South has sometimes saved us 
from the follies and passions of the North. They are our friends 
and brothers yet. 

And most of all did the nomination, by cordial unanimity, of 
James Buchanan say to the world that the United States de- 
sires honorable peace. 

" The nomination of Mr, Buchanan," writes Fremont's father- 
in-law, to the citizens of Missouri, "determines my course. I 
consider him the safest chance for preserving the peace of the 
country, now greatly endangered both at home and abroad; 
and believing him to be the best chance for peace, I hold it to 
be the duty of all to support it."* 

The American people so regard it. Mr. Buchanan has ex- 
actly that experience which fits him for the crisis, whether it be 
one of peace or war, or the anxious, doubtful, crisis of peace or 
war, when a rash word or a timid look may precipitate an im- 
pending evil. He has been under varied circumstances our re- 
presentative abroad. First, at the court of that great power of 
the North of Europe, whence more than once, out of the thick 
darkness of apparent despotism, have issued gleams of friendly 
feeling to our American interests and our country; then and 
lately, and during a period of grave responsibility, at the metro- 
polis of Great Britain, the seat of intelligence and high civiliza- 
tion more formidable in the rivalry of friendly nations than 
ruder elements of power. To meet and appreciate actual kind- 
ness, and yet not to he swayed too much by it — to assert rights 
with firmness — to repulse the first signs of indignity — to conduct 
controversy with ability and courtesy — and to make strangers, 
and cj^pecially Englishmen (who, to their credit and not to their 
* Colonel Benton's Letter, June 7, 1856. 



16 

shame be it spoken, are always watching and promoting English 
interests all the world over), to make them understand that 
American interests are dear to American statesmen, and will at 
all hazards, or at any sacrifice, be maintained ; — these were the 
duties and this the success of our Pennsylvania statesman during 
the three years he has, with so much honor to himself and us, 
represented this nation abroad. 

Nor is this all — four years of Mr. Buchanan's life, from 1844 
to 1848, were passed as the chief adviser of an executive ad- 
ministration, during a period of hostile diplomatic controversy 
with more nations than one, and at last of actual war. He was 
Secretary of State during thiit brief but perilous conflict with 
Mexico, which severely tried the spirit of the Nation and settled 
forever the doubt whether a Republic could wage a war in a 
distant country. The war was waged and the victory was won. 
The great executive trial was withstood. The flag of the Union 
was carried by our gallant soldiers to the centre of an enemy's 
country. It was magnanimously withdrawn when the victory was 
-VYon — and it is part of Mr. Buchanan's fame, one of the elements 
of strength he now has at home and abroad, that he was one of 
that Cabinet which carried the war to its wonderful result. 

Who then gives better assurance for peace than he does ? 
Who could more safely administer the Government in the trial 
of war, should Providence in its inscrutable wisdom thus afilict 
us ? 

RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE. 

Thus then stands, in these leading relations, the question be- 
fore the people of the United States. There is one other, though 
lower point of view in which it must be regarded. It is a pain- 
ful and degrading one. Still it must be recalled. 

Sixty years ago, in the month of January, 1793, George 
Washington wrote these memorable words: 

" We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this land the 
light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry 
and superstition, and that every person may here worship God 
according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened 
age and in the land of equal liberty, it is our boast that a man's 
religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the laws, nor 
deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest 
offices in the United States." 

On the 16th June, 185U, James Buchanan said to the people 
of the United States words not unlike those of Washington: 

" I cordially concur in the sentiments expressed by the Con- 
vention on the subject of civil and religious liberty. No party 
founded on religious or political intolerance towards one class of 



17 

American citizens, whether horn in our own or in a foreign land, 
can long continue to exist in this country. We are all e(iual 
hefore God and the Constitution ; and the dark spirit of despot- 
ism and higotry which would create odious distinctions among 
our fellow-citizens, will be speedily rebuked by a free and en- 
lightened public opinion." 

And we may well pause and ask why in this day of toleration 
and intelligence, it is necessary for a public man thus to speak. 
Why, have Washington's words of warning against religious in- 
tolerance gained new significance ? 

The answer, humiliating as it is, is at hand. Less than two 
years ago, there sprang up in darkness and secrecy — literally 
the growth of night — a political organization banded together by 
fearful and dishonest obligations, having two leading objects, — 
the political and social proscription of naturalized citizens and 
of the professors of one form of religious belief. It had for a 
time an ominous success. It seduced into its ranks many an 
honest and misguided man who saw not the path designing men 
were tempting him to tread. It had its attractions in mystery 
and mummery. It made its appeals to the worst passions of 
humanity, those endurating influences which have hardened the 
persecutor's heart in every age. The leading idea of its disci- 
pline was disingenuous evasion. It was the only party ever known 
whose fidelity was falsehood. Still, it grew, and strengthened, 
and, in its mystery and its intolerance, became one of the poli- 
tical parties of the country. It usurped a sacred name " Ame- 
rican," just as " Abolitionism" tries to wear the uniform of 
" Republicanism." But the moment of its apparent triumph 
was that of its discomfiture, for, as soon as it abandoned its 
secresy and renounced the sectarian sentiment, it withered and 
perished. So low did it sink, so fallen did it become, that its 
candidates have been thrust aside, and, when its principles were 
hinted at in the Convention, which now seeks to raise Republic- 
anism on its ruins, it was derided and insulted. Nay, further, 
as if to degrade this once powerful organization still more, the 
leaders of the sectional agitation movement — those, who, in 
Convention, at first faintly cajoled the accredited Americans, 
are now indirectly trying to court the very voters, who, a year 
ago, were persecuted and proscribed. Mark the words in which 
a leading Republican appeals to the emigrant from other lands. 
Mark the enormity, with which he compares our Southern breth- 
ren, one and all, to the butchers and despots of xVustria and 
Italy. 

"Our Declaration (of Abolition) appeals to the foreign born, 
who, rejoicing in the privileges of American citizens, will not 
hesitate to join in this holy endeavour to vindicate them against 
the aggressions of an oligarchy worse than any tyranny from 

2* 



18 

which they have fled. In this contest there is every motive to 
union, and also every motive to exertion. ' Now or never, now 
and forever !' Such was the ancient war cry which, embroidered 
on the Irish flag, streamed from the Castle of Dublin and re- 
sounded through the whole island, arousing a generous people 
to a new struggle for their ancient rights ; and this war cry may 
be fitly inscribed on our standard now. Arise now, or our in- 
exorable slave-driving tyranny will be fastened upon you ; arise 
now, and liberty will be secured forever."* 

Is it possible that this is an American citizen speaking of his 
own country and his own countrymen ? Is it conceivable that 
"Americans" can forgive such insults? Who can imagine that 
the naturalized or Catholic citizen can be misled by an appeal 
so disingenuous and indecent ? 

The Democratic party and their candidate profess no new- 
born zeal for religious freedom and equality of rights. They 
stand where they have always stood, and stand there more 
proudly now, surrounded and supported by gallant and honorable 
men of other parties who were glad to join them on the great 
platform which Washington helped to build, and which rests on 
the granite of the Constitution. 

Hence it is, that James Buchanan utters, on this vital topic, 
with new emphasis, the precepts and almost the words of Wash- 
ington. 

THE PENNSYLVANIA SPIRIT. 

These are the national aspects in which the question of the 
next Presidency is submitted to the people. There is one other 
view, more narrow, but still very impressive, which must be taken 
of it. 

It is a Pennsylvania nomination, and as such is commended to 
Pennsylvanians. To them the appeal is directly made. Why 
should the local sentiment be disowned ? Why should it not be 
stimulated ? 

When, on his return from England, Mr. Buchanan was wel- 
comed back by his fellow-citizens of Maryland, he told them that, 
at the outset of his professional life, he had once thought of re- 
moving and living in Baltimore; but early association, love for 
the soil which gave him birth, the memory of childhood, — all 
those ties which, operating on generous and patriotic hearts, bind 
us to our birth-place, were too powerful. He could not, and he did 
not desert Pennsylvania. Nor will Pennsylvania now withhold 
her support from him. 

The old Thirteen States, — of which Pennsylvania was the cen- 
tral and controlling one, — have given birth to twelve Presidents 

* Letter of the Hon. Charles Sumner on Fremont's nomination. 



19 

of the United States (Virginia, six; Massachusetts, two; North 
Carolina, two; New York and New Hampshire each one); and 
yet never till now has a nomination heen made from Pennsyl- 
vania. Pennsylvania by her vote has decided every Presidential 
election, yet her claims have never been regarded. She has 
yielded, and been postponed, and no voice of murmur or com- 
plaint has ever escaped her lips. Her fidelity to the Constitution 
and the Union, — her deference to national duty, — her submission 
to national policy, has been manifested at all times, and in every 
crisis. Her loyalty to a common country was proved long ago 
amid the trials of the Revolution ; and justice, slow but sure, is 
now done to her patriots of that day. "Pennsylvania," wrote 
Washington in the darkest hour of the war, " Pennsylvania is 
our chief dependence;" and our commonwealth did not fail him. 
It was on her shoulder, and not on that of Massachusetts and 
Virginia (as has been claimed) that the hand of Washington 
rested most heavily in hours of the greatest gloom and perplexity. 
When, in March, 1780, she abolished slavery within her limits, 
as she had a right to do, it was done temperately, delicately, 
and with tender regard for the rights of others bound at least in 
social union with her. As has been well said by one of her own 
historians, " No Southern State, no Southern statesman com- 
plained of her example. Obtrusive fanaticism had not then 
alienated the sympathies of our Southern brethren. The Penn- 
sylvania statesmen of the Revolution thought and acted in their 
treatment of this perilous subject on principles of moderate and 
practical wisdom. Abolition was with them no w^ayward freak 
of headlong enthusiasm." What a profanation of history it is, 
to compare the temperate, loyal spirit which then reigned in 
Pennsylvania with the vituperative disloyalty of our times ! It 
is quite as unjust as to call sectarian intolerance and proscription 
"Americanism," or to dignify abolitionists as republicans. 

When the Constitution of the United States was formed, the 
first State which adopted it was our neighbor Delaware, the next 
Pennsylvania, and the third New Jersey. The three middle 
states of the Old Thirteen, then as ever, were quickest in their 
loyalty. And they have been steadfast ever since. In 1819, 
the Legislature of Pennsylvania instructed its representatives to 
support the Missouri restriction ; but when Congress, reflecting 
the popular feeling throughout the land, decided adversely, 
Pennsylvania acquiesced, and welcomed Missouri cordially as she 
chose to come, — with or without slavery, as her people deter- 
mined for themselves, — into the family of States. No Pennsyl- 
vania Legislature ever approved the Missouri compromise. When, 
in 1847, designing and excited men, — the very same who now 
are fomenting sectional excitement again, — tore down part of 
the fabric of legislation, which our ancestors erected sixty-seven 



20 

years before, and sought to declare a paltering, timid war against 
the United States, by denying facilities to its officers, the sober 
loyalty of the people revolted, and the Democracy of Pennsyl- 
vania never rested till this vexatious statute was abrogated. 
Governor Johnston's defeat in 1851 was mainly attributable to 
his adherence to this reprobated legislation ; and now, let it be 
observed, his reward is, being a Pennsylvanian, to be scornfully 
repudiated and disowned by the very men and the very party 
which led him into error. The Democracy on this and on kin- 
dred subjects, in its loyalty to the Union and the Constitution, 
has known no shadow of turning. 

And now that, thus national in its feelings, a national man of 
her own, like Mr. Buchanan, is put forward for the first office in 
the people's gift, who shall say that an appeal to the state pride 
of Pennsylvania will be vain? It has been truly said by a loyal 
Pennsylvanian : 

"Local exultation in honors rendered to our own public men, 
is not an illusory sentiment. No one will think the woi'se of us 
for indulfjino; it. It is that which has made Virginia the mother 
of Presidents. She nurses her children like a loving mother, and 
does not bind them out or cast them off without care as to what 
becomes of them. It was that which made Massachusetts cling 
to Mr. Webster; North Carolina to William Gaston, one who, 
according to the new standard of politico-i'eligious intolerance, 
was not fit to be trusted in public office ; and South Carolina to 
Mr. Calhoun ; and which bound Kentucky, by devotion that never 
abated, to Mr. Clay. And now, when, for the first time |for 
seventy years, a Pennsylvania Statesman is named for the 
highest honor in the Nation's gift, have we not a right, nay, is it 
not our duty to avow the throbbing of the same sentiment in our 
hearts? If the habit of easy self-sacrifice, the readiness to be 
content with small honors and subordinate offices, which has been 
so long the discredit and shame of Pennsylvania, if all this have 
not chilled to absolute indifference every natural emotion of 
honest pride in our bosom, this commonwealth will speak out now 
in tones which will not soon die away to silence." 

Nor is this all, — and we regret to take a still narrower view of 
the subject, — as a matter of fair State competition, what would 
the interests of Pennsylvania gain by sustaining a candidate se- 
lected as John C. Fremont was, even aside from sectional feelings ? 
The main influences which sustained him then, and which sustain 
him now, are Northern fanaticism and the wild spirit of specula- 
tive adventure, stimulated by the satanic and fanatic Press (those 
which have been well described as "the percussion presses of the 
country"), — the organs, by mutual crimination and confession, of 
venality and fanaticism. The nomination of Fremont was a vic- 
tory over Pennsylvania. The power of speculative wealth, — the 



21 

sympathy of operators in distant land scrip, puffed up to-day and 
depressed to-morrow, swayed the convention Avhich made this 
nomination, and even there the Pennsylvania spirit was trampled 
down with insult. 

This is not rhetoric — not declamation — but simple and pre- 
cise truth. It is a fact which cannot be controverted, that this 
nomination is, at least partly, due to the speculative sympathy 
we have spoken of — in mines, and land scrip, and the woist of 
credit — and that if successful under such auspices, it would in- 
augurate a new era of commercial adventure and latitudinarian 
administration, such as no rational or conservative man can fail 
to deplore. 

What can Pennsylvania — her moderate hard-working men — 
her modest but substantial enterprises — her farmers and miners 
and mechanics, — what can the merchants and traders of Phila- 
delphia and Pittsburg, those who have contributed so many mil- 
lions to our local improvements, gain from an ascendency like 
this? 

It is their interest, then, as well as their duty, to support a states- 
man whose whole life and every thought is devoted to Pennsyl- 
vania, and no one out of Pennsylvania will think the worse of 
him for this. " The older I grow," said Mr. Buchanan, once, in 
his place in the Senate, "the more am I inclined to be a State 
Rights man." 

Pennsylvania, surely, will thank him for this. 
Such is the question which the American people must decide. 
If any fact has been here stated which history does not record, 
let it be disproved. If any inference has been drawn which fair 
reasoning does not authorize, let it be pointed out. The truth 
has been sought for anxiously and conscientiously. The issues 
for good or for evil are most momentous, and cannot be avoided 
or concealed in any spurious excitement which may be attempted. 
The election of a sectional President by a strictly geographical 
vote can lead to but one result, — the practical breaking down of 
the Executive Department of the Government, or a dissolution 
of the Union. And who, in his sober meditations, can decide 
■which is the most fearful. It is no idle fear — no rhetorical 
prophecy of evil — but the statement of a certain result. 

May these " Words of Counsel," written by no alarmist, but by 
a temperate and reasoning student of his country's history, — by 
one who has been taught from early boyhood to reverence as his 
highest social law the Constitution of the Union, and never be- 
lieved before, that, in defiance of Washington's farewell and 
solemn words, sectional and geographical parties would divide this 
country and endanger the Union. May these words of friendly 
and earnest counsel, addressed to reasoning men, help to avert 
these sad results ! 



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